Do I want to be great?

I’m not a great writer. I read one of Tomás Bjartur’s stories recently. He is a great writer. So is Natalie Cargill. Both of them were at Inkhaven in April, but I didn’t read anything of theirs until after the retreat. I didn’t even realize I would want to. My mind was occupied.

When I wasn’t writing (or stressing) I spent a lot of time socializing. It’s good that I did. I was more open with strangers – and so I made more noble friends – than ever before. But Tomás and Natalie seemed kind of remote, when I looked toward them. That’s probably one more illusion I was under. So I didn’t speak to them.

Would it have mattered? “Great writing” isn’t ebola. Literature won’t start bleeding from my pores a week after I make contact. I need to actually produce something, and feel it fall apart, and do it over again, until my senses align with the rhythms of generation. Maybe I’ll never be great, but at least I can stay unconstipated.

Is “being great” what I really want? Glory, influence, respect? Control – is that what I want? Maybe. Because I’m afraid. Gotta stop bad things from happening! In the beginning fear guides us. In the middle, control serves us. In the end, both grow stagnant and evil. They stamp down on life, in the name of securing… something, always deferred. To make sure.

I don’t want any more control than I must, which is less than I fear I need.

So what do I want? I don’t know if I can just say it. Not because I’m ashamed, but because being precise feels like taking control. The fear is, maybe I don’t know what I want. Then how will I predict myself? How will anyone predict me? If I can’t force myself to be predictable, how can I be sure I won’t fall apart and maybe die? Or that some other agent that’s forcing itself to be predictable won’t treat me as a little dangerous, a little stupid – a little more worthy of death?

Fuck that. I want to hike an ageless forest for hours, for unspecified days and weeks, undisturbed by such concepts as inconvenience and dirt. I want to pause at dawn to watch the stillness of water; I want to stand in the rain to see it dance. I want to be overcome by discovery, by a new thought, and not because of some secret relief that my knowledge might gain me an edge over someone. I want to stumble sock-first into a puddle of cold filth, and laugh! I want to be free from pain. I want to be free from fleeing from pain. I want to be free from the need to accept a career of righteous triage, or a world of barely-mitigated catastrophes, or a future of hierarchical glory. I want beauty, and variety, and change, and solitude. Oneness, otherness, everything, and nothing.

I want to approach people because they are people. I want to read your words because you were behind them.

I don’t want to project remoteness, to see it reflected back at me. I don’t want us to invent reasons to fear each other.

As far as my fears are concerned, there’s no time for me to learn to be a great writer. Before long, nobody will have a reason to consume what any human writes, no matter how great. There’ll always be something better. If they do read my words, it’ll be because they care they came from me. Or from a human. Maybe all my practice will amount to nothing more than a sprinkling of honest okayness in a world overfull of mass-produced mastery.

I’ve started keeping a journal every day. The rules are simple: no editing. It’s easy to justify stopping to edit a half-written sentence when I’m fearful of what my reader might expect of me. So I write only for myself, and let the rhythm play itself out. Repetition is irrelevant. Originality is irrelevant.

It’s been over a month since Inkhaven ended. When it did, I thought it would take a few months for me to integrate the experience.

So far, I was right: I haven’t integrated it yet.